She's Here!

(This is 2 days late, I've been busy.)

Hurrah!
Annaliese Lee Coughlin was born at 11:06 pm on Sunday, January 6th, 2008.
Our gift for the 12th day of Christmas.

The Short version: 7 lbs 10 oz, 20+ inches long, with lots of hair.She's healthy, calm, and has turned into a cute pink little person in the past few hours. Alexe is doing fine. She went through 25 hours of drug free labor like a champion, and is resting in bed next to me with Annaliese suckling away happily.

The Long version:
An important note: very late in our pregnancy we decided to have a home birth with licensed professionals.

Saturday night Alexe started having contractions while we were watching To Catch a Thief, the last in our pile of Carry Grant films. Good movie.

By 10 pm they were under 10 minutes apart, and strong enough to launch us out of bed to work through them, so we're starting the labor clock there.

The midwives arrived at 4 am.

(I have here deleted the even longer version, that ran through vomiting, bathes, water breaking, etc. because my fuzzy brain can't write it without making it too graphic for all but a few, and I want to send this out once.)

Annaliese was born at 11:06 that night, after 25 hours of, honestly, miserable labor. She came out with a little cry, went straight to Alexe's chest, and in a few seconds had pooped and latched on.

We had a bit of a scare immediately following delivery. Alexe was bleeding heavily; we called 911, and as soon as I hung up the phone the bleeding stopped. The ambulance folks were very nice, checked over the baby and Alexe, and went away.

The midwives did all their checks, cleaned up the house, did some laundry, and left around 2:30 am this morning, with Alexe and Petunia in bed together, and me wandering the house on wobbly legs that had been holding Alexe up for a day, and a mind that was catching up with the fear of Alexe's bleeding.

We were up at 4 and 8:30, Annaliese and Alexe are snoozing and eating in shifts, I gave the little one her first bath this morning, (Thank you Paula) and we're generally glazed and enjoying the little noises that Annaliese makes. (Oh, and changing diapers. She's pooped 3 times in her first 12 hours here.)